A Very Thin and Weak Conception of Being an "American"

Let’s start with this:

Miller’s kids are 5, 3 and 2, so what they took home from Sinatra or Dean Martin Christmas special is questionable. Also, where was his wife, who last we heard was being groomed to become another baby incubator for Elon Musk? Maybe she doesn’t count enough to be mentioned in a tweet.

Miller is Jewish (according to his former Rabbi), so he should understand that being “white” or being “American” or whatever he considers himself isn’t as simple as he would make it seem. I don’t know what they’re teaching kids in classes nowadays, but even my small town high school history classes taught me about the successive waves of immigrants (Italians and Irish, to name two groups) who were discriminated against even though they’re now considered “white” and/or “Heritage Americans”.

Moving past the white/American part of this, the vacuous nostalgia that Miller exhibits here is the core of a lot of MAGA and other right-wing propaganda. Here’s the thing about the Sinatra and Dean Martin (and Andy Williams and Bob Hope and name any other big entertainer from that era) Christmas specials: they were pretty weak, mainly because they were perfunctory and unoriginal. There are a lot of things in the past that one might be worth waxing nostalgic about*, but phone-it-in 60’s and 70’s Christmas specials by big-name stars aren’t one of them.

I realize this asshole has a lot of power and is going to use it to punish people who he thinks aren’t white enough or American enough, but man is his notion of what’s “white” and “American” really weak.

*In case Miller needs a list of things worth being nostalgic about, here are some of mine: small appliances (toasters, clothes irons, etc.) that work well and last for years, popular Hollywood movies that aren’t Marvel or DC universe cartoons, and the ability for a one-income middle-class family to afford a house and to send their kids to college.